Sex trafficking doesn't just happen in the movies or foreign countries, said Ashley Cash, a committee chair for Forum 35. It happens in Baton Rouge, and the young professionals' organization hopes to spread awareness locally about the "modern-day slavery" affecting the city.

Forum 35 may be better known for its wine tasting events or blues music forums, said Cash, who serves as the cultural diversity committee co-chair. But a panel on sex trafficking during an open discussion at the Lyceum Ballroom Thursday (Sept. 11) attempts to raise awareness of a serious issue facing Baton Rouge.

One of Thursday's panelists, Emily Morrow-Chenevert, said the Interstate 10 and Interstate 12 corridor makes Baton Rouge a hub for sex trafficking. New Orleans is among the top 20 cities in America with the most sex trafficking, and Houston and Memphis are other big destinations. Baton Rouge, then, serves as a convenient stop between those places.

Morrow-Chenevert, the national awareness director for Baton Rouge-based Trafficking Hope, said some street gangs today are "selling women more than drugs." Drugs can be sold once, she said. Women, on the other hand, as forced prostitutes, can be sold 15-to-25 times a day.

"People are willing to pay for sex and traffickers are going to help meet the demand," she said.

Some "johns" may not even realize the women they pay for sex are victims of a sex trafficking operation, Morrow-Chenevert said. Websites like backpage.com, which connect johns with prostitutes, are also used by sex traffickers and pimps.

Morrow-Chenevert said there's an estimated 27 million victims of sex trafficking worldwide. Panels like the one sponsored by Forum 35, she said, will hopefully start the conversation about sex trafficking so people realize "this is modern-day slavery," and it's happening in their backyard. When New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl in 2013, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune explored one woman's story as a sex trafficking survivor, in which she said she was forced to sleep 25 men or more a day.

"Human trafficking is a topic that we have all seen mentioned in the newspaper or on a billboard down I-10, but too many of us know very little about what it means and how it impacts our community here in Baton Rouge -- regardless of race, religion, or socio-economic status," Cash said. "We are creating a safe space where we can have an open discussion as we learn more and pull back the veil on this sensitive issue."

Other speakers sitting on Thursday's panel include Natalie LaBorde, a policy director with Jindal's office, and Morgan Lamandre, the advocacy director for Sexual Trauma Awareness and Response, known as STAR.

The event from 6:30-8 p.m. at 124 Third Street in downtown Baton Rouge.